Media Computing Group: Henning Kiel

Henning Kiel

Reducing Mental Context Switches During Programming

Supporting Code Comprehension using Semantic Links in Software Development Artifacts

Test cases can be a key artifact for program comprehension. By identifying and presenting test cases relevant to the source code currently worked on by the user, program comprehension can be improved. Especially in test-driven development this can be of great use as test cases already serve as low-level specification of the implementation and are always kept up-to-date.

In the work presented here, a prototype was realized implementing above idea as a plugin for a widely used text editor. The given prototype was evaluated in a user study. While no impact on program comprehension was found, the plugin improved navigation between source code and test cases.